How effective is ChatGPT for PPC? 

In short, very. 

There are lots of different use cases. And it has the potential to boost your campaign creation efficiency by an order of magnitude when used correctly. What previously took two days of solid work can now be done in 30 minutes. 

In this article, we’ll outline seven activities you can automate when using Open AI’s ChatGPT for PPC, covering everything from Google Ads keyword research to TikTok videos. 

If you follow all the steps outlined below you’ll be equipped with everything you need to run an ad campaign across paid Search and Social. Think of it as a simple framework for kickstarting your PPC activity as fast as possible with artificial intelligence. 

That said, ChatGPT natural language processing outputs aren’t perfect. And they probably won’t fully resonate with your brand’s tone of voice. But that can be solved with a bit of editing. What the outputs do provide you with is a foundation that’s already 80% of the way there. 

Ready to create your next PPC campaign in record time? 

ChatGPT for PPC: 10 use cases

Each use case is explored in more detail in the 7-step framework below (complete with examples). You can run through the entire process from start to finish. Or alternatively, use the links below to learn more about the use cases most relevant to your needs. 

1. Create 5 paid ads campaign ideas for your business 
2. Create 15 relevant keywords for your business 
3. Create 5 ideas of ideal customer targets for a PPC campaign
4. Create demographics, behaviours, & interests based on these 5 ad targets
5. Craft a PPC ad campaign for your business 
6. Draft PPC ad headlines and descriptions for your campaign
7. Generate a sales landing page for your PPC campaign
8. Generate Facebook and Instagram ad ideas for your business 
9. Create video scripts and ads to use on TikTok and YouTube Shorts 
10. Generate a video script for a 60-second YouTube ad 

Caution: Always review and rdit ChatGPT outputs 

We’ve made this point above. But it bears repeating. 

The real danger lies in using ChatGPT with a ‘set and forget’ mentality. You can use Zapier to connect it to lots of other marketing platforms and let things run in a completely automated way with little human oversight. But this exposes your brand to considerable risk, for several reasons: 

• Factual errors - ChatGPT sometimes gets things dead wrong. 
• Tone of voice issues - Outputs may not fully reflect the tone of your website. 
• Redundancy - Needless repetition of certain words and phrases. 
• Compliance & legal - ChatGPT ad copy may not comply with industry standards. 

With the exception of compliance and legal issues, there are a few workarounds you can adopt to address the three other common problems with ChatGPT outputs:

• You can improve factual accuracy of outputs by copying and pasting relevant data below your prompt and beginning with the modifier “Based on the data below…”. You can also install the WebChatGPT Chrome extension to add relevant web results to your prompts for more accurate and up-to-date answers.

• To get ChatGPT to match your brand tone of voice, copy and paste one of your best performing blog posts along with the prompt: “Extract the tone of voice that the writer used to create the below article”. Save the output and then add it as a modifier to future prompts e.g. “Use a positive and promotional tone of voice” 

• To minimise redundancy, simply add “Avoid repetition” to relevant prompts. 

On a recent webinar we spoke to Head of Paid Media at Clickoo, Gareth Westhead, and he offered a further important reason for editing all your outputs: 

"If everyone is using ChatGPT, there is a real risk that your ad copy will end up looking very similar to your competitors. Everyone will look like everyone else and your unique value proposition will get drowned out in the noise. There is still a very high value on human creativity, and it’s wise to keep the human touch involved."
Gareth Westhead
Head of Paid Media at Clickoo

With those important caveats out of the way, let’s dive into specific practical applications when using ChatGPT for PPC. 

We’re going to use Lunio in the examples below for illustrative purposes. But the same steps will work for all businesses when you modify the prompts in the appropriate way. 

Before proceeding, create a new Google Doc and use it to record all the ChatGPT outputs you generate. These can then be collaboratively reviewed and edited by you and your digital marketing team. This can then become a living document which acts as a single point of reference for all relevant copy assets associated with your campaign. 

Tip: For all the latest helpful ChatGPT prompts, bookmark FlowGPT.

PPC campaign ideas 

Your initial campaign idea is the bedrock upon which everything else is built. It sets the direction and focus for all your other associated copy and creative assets. 

The idea should capture one of the unique selling points of your product or service and speak directly to one of your target audiences. 

But how can you let ChatGPT know about the nuances of your product or service? Simple, just copy and paste the text from your website homepage or product page. 

Provided your site copy is well-written and summarises your unique value proposition, you can pair it with a prompt to generate some initial PPC campaign ideas. 

ChatGPT Prompt

• Can you come up with 5 paid ads campaign ideas based on this copy? 
• [Paste your homepage or product page copy below prompt] 

Tip: Prior to pasting in your website copy run it through this markdown tool to make sure ChatGPT can understand the formatting of your page. Use this for other prompts where you are using additional information that would benefit from being presented with markdown intact. 

When we fed this prompt into ChatGPT with Lunio’s product page copy, we got these ideas: 

These are all reasonable starting points. It’s easy to see how we could build out the rest of the required campaign messaging and creative assets based on these 5 different avenues. 

At this point simply copy and paste these expanded campaign ideas into your Google Doc to refine and edit later. 

Keyword research 

Keyword research has been a fundamental part of PPC since the very beginning. Getting it right is crucial for success on search engines. But it can be quite time consuming to do manually. 

Today, ChatGPT can do much of the heavy lifting for you in seconds. 

ChatGPT Prompt 

• Create 15 [industry] keywords based on this copy from this website
• [Paste your product page copy below the prompt] 

Here are the keywords it suggested we use at Lunio using the prompt “Create 15 performance marketing efficiency keywords based on copy from this website” 

Many of these keywords are viable and worth pursuing. But a few of them, such as “carbon offset” and “trusted by leading brands” won’t bring us the kind of traffic we’re looking for. In these cases ChatGPT has picked out words and phrases from our product page which aren’t as commercially relevant. 

Again paste all of these keywords into your master Google Doc. But keep in mind even if they look like they’re in the right ballpark, each keyword still needs to be analysed using a tool like Ahrefs, Semrush, or Moz to make sure they are competitive and cost effective. 

Plug each one into your keyword analysis tool and compare against other top-performing keywords before officially adding it to your campaign. This will ensure you’re generating relevant ad impressions at an affordable cost-per-click (CPC). 

Ad targeting and audience segmentation

Now we’ve got our campaign ideas and keyword targets, it’s time to start thinking about the key demographics we want to reach with our ads. These will vary slightly depending on the nature of the campaign idea. 

ChatGPT Prompt 

• Can you create 5 ideas of ideal customer targets for a PPC campaign based on the keywords you generated and the campaign ideas below?
• [Paste your previously generated campaign ideas] 

Here are the results we got: 

What’s particularly impressive here are the suggested industries we target for each campaign idea. 

For the “Save Your Ad Spend” approach, ChatGPT recommends we focus on the finance, insurance, and technology sectors, all of which have higher average cost-per-click values relative to other industries. This means they’ll be more sensitive to cost-saving messaging in relation to PPC. 

Likewise, it correctly identified that the healthcare, education, and legal markets would be particularly sensitive to messaging about privacy-first advertising solutions.  

Next, you can drill down further into each audience target by asking ChatGPT to expand on relevant demographics, behaviours, and interests. With the coming deprecation of third-party cookies in 2024, it will become increasingly important to incorporate these kinds of audience signals into your campaign targeting. 

Again, this point was stressed by Gareth Westhead in our recent webinar: 

You need to build a deep understanding of who your ideal customer is based on the people who have bought from you already. You can then use that data to target similar people based on behaviours, values, and outlook on life. We now know that browsing and shopping behaviours are heavily influenced by people’s outlook on life. So knowing this will help guide your campaign decision making.
Gareth Westhead
Head of Paid Media at Clickoo‍

ChatGPT Prompt 

• Can you create audience demographics, behaviours, and interests based on these 5 ad targets? 

Here are the results we got: 

These are reasonable. But they aren’t brilliant. The repetition and redundancy issues with ChatGPT are obvious here. It’s suggested the exact same demographic information for every campaign idea: “Small to medium-sized business owners and decision-makers, aged 25-55, with a medium to high level of education and income.” 

This is broadly accurate on a top-level. But it’s not refined enough to make your campaign targeting as effective as possible. To improve your demographic profiles, refer to your own pool of first-party customer data to add more granularity and nuance. The more specific you can be, the better. 

The behaviours and interests are a little less repetitive. But again, there is significant room for improvement. Add these to your Google doc as a starting point, but make sure you put in the time to refine them before adding them to your campaign. 

Campaign copy and landing page copy

This is where ChatGPT really excels. Ad and landing page copy are traditionally the most labour-intensive aspects of PPC campaign creation. But with automated machine learning outputs as your starting point, it can cut the time requirement in half. 

Keep in mind that this part of the process is extremely commercially sensitive. Your ad and landing page copy largely determine both your click-through rates and conversion rates. And it’s essential the messaging used for each is in line with the rest of your brand.

With that in mind, set aside enough time to refine your ad and landing page copy outputs to help improve your performance. This is the step in the framework where additional human oversight and creativity can pay dividends. 

ChatGPT Prompt 

• Can you draft a PPC ad campaign based on the following target information?
• [Paste initial campaign idea]
• [Paste relevant target keywords]
• [Paste relevant audience targeting and segmentation details] 

Here are the results we got: 

In addition to the ad copy, ChatGPT also provides suggestions for all other aspects of the campaign including ad extensions, bidding strategies, and remarketing ideas.

The suggestions are fairly generic though. If you’re an experienced PPC professional, you probably don’t need the additional information about extensions, bidding, and retargeting. 

But the ad copy is definitely useful. If that’s all you're interested in, you can modify the initial prompt to create more variants to experiment with. 

ChatGPT Prompt

• Can you draft 5 PPC ad headlines and descriptions based on the following target information?

You can then repeat this process for each individual campaign idea to build up a bank of ad headlines and descriptions in your Google doc. 

Next, let’s get ChatGPT to create our landing page copy that visitors will see when they click on one of our ads. With the prompt below you can ensure your output is formatted correctly, complete with suggested image ideas too! 

ChatGPT Prompt 

• Can you generate a sales landing page that this PPC ad campaign will drive traffic to? Include placeholder images with alt tags and use markdown formatting 

This could definitely use some improvement. For example, the bullet point list of benefits ChatGPT has suggested essentially repeats the same thing 4 different ways. The modified version below would be much more effective. 

With Lunio, you’ll benefit from:

• Conversion rate optimisation 
• Cleaner analytics free from fake ad engagements 
• Access to first-party click data 
• Unrivalled traffic analysis accuracy  

In addition, the H1 copy isn’t as compelling as it could be. “Convert Wasted Ad Spend Into Revenue Growth” is much better than “Boost Your Marketing Efficiency with Lunio”.

Facebook and Instagram image ads 

So far we’ve focused primarily on using ChatGPT for Google Search campaigns. But paid social is an important part of PPC too. It’s the most effective way of generating interest among customers who aren’t already aware of your brand and aren’t necessarily ready to buy right now. 

The Consumer Experience Sentiment Report published by Merkle in 2021 found that 50% of respondents found that social media advertising helped them discover new products and services that interest them.  

So what's the best way to leverage ChatGPT to generate demand via paid social? The logical starting point is to create a few ad ideas based on one of your earlier campaign variants. 

ChatGPT Prompt 

• Can you generate a facebook and instagram ad idea based on the information below? 
• [Paste initial campaign idea]
• [Paste relevant audience targeting and segmentation details] 

What’s interesting here is that the second ad idea based on the graph is very similar to one of the elements already on Lunio’s homepage. Pretty impressive considering we didn’t feed any of our homepage copy to ChatGPT throughout this process. 

But as Lunio is an illustration-based brand, the first idea featuring an image of a small business owner holding a laptop wouldn’t work for us. Furthermore, having the business owner look stressed while looking at a Lunio ad on-screen is likely to convey the wrong message. It may be perceived that Lunio is the source of his frustration. Not every ChatGPT idea is a winner. 

You can run the prompt above for each initial campaign idea and audience segment. Once you’ve got a handful of viable options you can further refine them and begin a process of A/B testing on Ads Manager to hone in on the best performers. 

Short social video ads 

Video ads have come to dominate the paid social landscape. In 2022, social video ad spending grew by a huge 20.1% to $24.35 billion. And with the rise of bitesize video content on TikTok, Instagram Reels, and YouTube Shorts, it’s becoming increasingly important to add this content format to your PPC strategy. 

The simplest way to do this with ChatGPT is to ask it to convert your previous image ad ideas into short video scripts. 

ChatGPT Prompt

• Can you create video scripts for video ads that we can use on TikTok and YouTube shorts based on the 2 ad ideas above?

ChatGPT will provide you with a voiceover script and a rough storyboard of scene ideas. It would take quite a bit of additional work to convert this idea into a finished video. But all the foundations are there, giving you inspiration and a helpful head start. 

Long-form video ads 

By longform we mean around the 60 second mark. This content format is ideal for the skippable ads that appear at the start of YouTube videos. They’re perfect for PPC campaign retargeting. 

YouTube retargeting enables you to reach out again to visitors who clicked through to your site from your paid Search and Social ads but bounced without purchasing. And the numbers show it's particularly effective: 

• Retargeted site visitors are 43% more likely to convert

• Retargeting can increase brand name searches by 1,406% – of six different ad placement strategies, retargeting generated the highest uplift

If you’re already paying for traffic via Google search and paid social, it makes sense to capitalise on those visits through YouTube retargeting. But first you need a 60-second ad. 

ChatGPT Prompt

• Can you generate a video script for a 60-second YouTube ad based on a combination of the 2 script options you generated above?

We haven’t included the full script above as it’s quite long. But you get the picture. It’s taken elements from the two short form scripts and combined them to create an ad likely to resonate with business owners interested in increasing performance marketing efficiency. 

The concept is a bit “on the nose” though. It lacks originality and creative flair. But it would likely deliver passable click-through and conversion rates with a bit of refinement and professional production quality. So still impressive nonetheless. 

Eliminate wasted ad spend on search and social 

Combining the 7 steps above will give you everything you need to launch an effective PPC campaign in under 30 minutes. That represents a massive efficiency boost. 

But the same caution always exists: it isn’t perfect. Treat ChatGPT as a precocious intern - prepare to spend some time reviewing the work and expect mistakes. If you don’t you risk paying the price via reduced campaign performance and potential legal issues. 

And if you’re being more efficient with your time, you should be more efficient with your ad spend too. By automatically eliminating all fake ad engagements, Lunio converts wasted spend into extra conversions and sales on all ad networks including Google, Meta, LinkedIn, TikTok, and more. 

Simply deploy the tracking script via your tag manager of choice and let Lunio’s proactive, self-learning algorithms analyse and filter your paid traffic to focus 100% of your budget on real customers. 

Want to see Lunio in action and find out how much fake traffic is costing your business?